It was a 7 hour drive from Delhi to Mandawa, but we stopped half way for some breakfast at an Indian service station. There were colourful blankets made into a sunroopf in the garden and lots of flowers...much nicer than an english service station, and we had fried toast and some pineapple juice. We arrived at the hotel early afternoon and it was an old haveli style building with tiny balconys, paintings on the walls, an inside courtyard and in our room we had a four poster bed! Not really slumming it like we thought we were going to at the moment. The dinner there wasn't great, but we were given a nice Thia green style soup with rice in it. We were feeling a bit stingy when we were taken sight seeing in the afternoon, so instead of going into the museum we were meant to go in, we went for a walk around a Haveli town, with a tour guide explaining all of the paintings on the buildings to us. We also stopped outside a hotel and a man by the door put massive red lines on our foreheads then stuck rice to them...?

The roof top had a really good view at the hotel, so after dinner we sat up there and down in the street below we could see an Indian wedding going down the street. It was only men and there was a young boy dressed up sat on a horse (our driver said people get married as young as 10 in Rajastan!). There were trumpets, men singing and lots of men dancing.

This is also the first place weve seen where bulls casually walk around the streets...luckily laura wasnt wearing her red skirt!